Unemployment Extension Is Stalled, With 2 Proposals Defeated in the Senate

By ASHLEY PARKER

January 14, 2014

WASHINGTON — Unemployment benefits for 1.3 million of the long-term unemployed — and millions more in the future — were imperiled on Tuesday after Senate efforts to reach accord on legislation to revive them collapsed in partisan finger-pointing.

After days of negotiations, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, abruptly called a vote to end debate on two Democratic measures that would extend benefits for out-of-work Americans for at least three months, gambling that he could muster enough support from moderate Republicans to move on to final passage for at least one of the proposals.

But both votes failed, and the possibility of a bipartisan deal collapsed during procedural arguments, with Democrats and Republicans accusing one another of negotiating in bad faith.

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Some senators remained optimistic that they would still be able to reach a compromise, but the earliest they are likely to return to the legislation is at the end of the month, when they return from a weeklong break.

The first vote failed, 52 to 48, on a measure proposed by the Democratic leadership that would have extended benefits for 11 months. The extension would have been largely financed by continuing a 2 percent cut to Medicare health providers for an additional year, through 2024. The second vote, on the original bill, which would have extended benefits for three months at a cost of $6.4 billion, failed 55 to 45.

An extension of benefits, which expired at the end of December, did not make it into the two-year budget deal passed just before Congress left for its winter recess.

Republicans had balked during negotiations at what they viewed as the tyrannical leadership of Mr. Reid, who had refused to let them offer any amendments to unemployment measures. On Tuesday, Mr. Reid offered to let each party introduce five amendments.

But Republicans remained dissatisfied. They said that his requirement that each amendment receive 60 votes to pass doomed their measures, especially since Mr. Reid was demanding that Republicans give up the customary 60-vote threshold to end debate on the final bill and agree to a simple majority vote.

“I hope you all are beginning to get the picture here of who’s responsible for dysfunction in the Senate,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader. “This is utterly absurd.”

Referring to Mr. Reid’s amendment proposal, he added, “I couldn’t sell to my members something crafted like this, that guaranteed we had no real chance.”

Mr. Reid accused the Republicans of wanting to “have their cake and eat it, too.”

“The question is: Are Republicans filibustering unemployment insurance benefits or are they not?” Mr. Reid asked, implying that they were, in fact, filibustering any deal.

Republicans accused Democrats of playing politics and refusing to compromise. They said Mr. Reid and his colleagues ultimately wanted to be able to blame Republicans for scuttling the unemployment benefits deal.

“Here’s the bottom-line question to the majority party in the Senate: Is this about a sound bite or is this about actually extending unemployment benefits?” said Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota. “I think they need to answer that question.”

A group of largely moderate Republicans — led by Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Dean Heller of Nevada, and including Mr. Hoeven — had been working on their own alternative, which they hoped could win bipartisan support. Their plan, which was discussed at both caucuses’ closed-door policy lunches on Tuesday, would have extended unemployment benefits by three months and helped pay for them by continuing some of the existing across-the-board federal spending cuts over a 10-year period.

The proposal essentially stalled when negotiations on the overall unemployment deal collapsed.

Senators on both sides said they hoped that the breakdown in negotiations represented a temporary setback rather than the end of the road.

“We’re hopeful that today’s procedural votes on the floor will not be the end of this process,” said Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, a member of the Republican group seeking an alternative plan.

Similarly, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said he was “hopeful that maybe today’s debate in a procedural sense will get the two sides together.”

But coming off a recent push by both parties to claim the mantle of antipoverty activists and supporters of middle-class Americans, Mr. Schumer could not resist a political dig: “The world is changing. And helping average people, of whom most of these beneficiaries are, is what the public is demanding.

“It’s more important to the average citizen than deficit reduction, as important as that is, than Obamacare, as important as that is, and they’re just missing the call.”